'The Wire' really drew on a lot of real-life situations and real-life organizations - it created fiction to make a social statement about reality.

Because of the way tech is changing, and becoming cheaper and user-friendly, it's becoming easier to make films cheaply, maintaining quality.

I mean, you know actors, we always want to do something else, something different.

You either get better, or you don't progress.

If you're going to come at me, come at me respectfully, and I will respond respectfully.

It's funny, because in drama school, my greatest strength was my range. So my early career was like that: I played all kinds of different characters.

When you're in a high-stress situation, dynamics between people can change.

The African American community is so under-served in the entertainment industry.

Notes are tricky in an audition, because I find, more often than not, my instinct is right.

Nothing will ever top 'The Wire.' It was historical. It was black cinema.

I'm an artist at heart.

You're handsome and you have a nice accent, and a chest that would make a nun perspire.

It was a child's awareness, never spoken or even fully acknowledged, but deeply felt.

Achievement brings with it its own anticlimax.

Many heroic exploits and chivalrous adventures are related to me which exist only in the regions of fancy. With me the world has taken great liberties, and yet I have been but a common man.

There are only a few places that I go where people recognize me anyway. I have to be at the right place, in the right city. It's not really that much of an issue.

I haven't stopped painting or drawing - I've just added another medium.

Kitsch is the contemporary form of the Gothic, Rococo, Baroque.

America is a passionate idea or it is nothing. America is a human brotherhood or it is chaos.

The most revealing books are the Holy Koran and the Holy Bible. The Bhagavad Gita is a great book as well, and the works of Buddha. These are the major influences on the world.

I love what I do. But I want to go home, just for four days, then I'll get back on the road again.